4 ms·

What are these devices like for hacking with / and or attaching to other electronics? What is android like for these sort of uses as opposed to, say, a Raspberr

by sambeau 11y ago

What are these devices like for hacking with / and or attaching to other electronics? What is android like for these sort of uses as opposed to, say, a Raspberry Pi (or Arduino)? I'd love to use something like this to monitor the water in a tank on a hillside. The battery + the Cell connectivity + (potentially) the camera would be perfect. (I'm sure there are suitable solar phone chargers that would work with it too) It's so cheap I could afford to break a few...

rtl49 11y ago
It depends a great deal on whether it's possible to unlock the bootloader. Unfortunately, many of these cheap phones are loaded with the carrier's software. They don't want you to uninstall it, so they don't let you unlock the bootloader, which would enable you to modify the system partition on the device. This means you can't do much with it unless someone discovers a vulnerability that grants you root access.
- jnbiche 11y ago
  He wouldn't need to load a custom ROM just to make and install an app that monitors a few peripheral sensors (all of which should be accessible via the Android SDK).
  - rtl49 11y ago
    True, but he specifically mentioned the RbPi and Arduino in his comment. This makes me believe he's interested in more functionality than what is offered by the standard API.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
jnbiche 11y ago
Well, it's running Android, so all you'd need to do is make an Android app to do this. Android SDK is pretty powerful even without root access, so what you're wanting to do shouldn't be a problem from a software perspective (now, whether the hardware is appropriate, I have no idea).
thearn4 11y ago
I think the biggest advantage of a micro-controller (like Arduino or an MSP) or prototyping microcomputer (like the Pi or BeagleBone) are control of GPIOs from a reasonably high-level language. At least for my applications. serial and parallel ports on PCs used to give you some functionality similar to this too. But smartphones lack that for the most part (the best you can expect is typically bluetooth comms with a separate device). If you need remote logging, the 3G Particle Electron boards (particle.io) should be released soon, which I'm pretty excited for.
- TkTech 11y ago
  More importantly, the power usage typically is/can be a few orders of magnitude less, especially when you can control the power state of the IC and wake it up with an external interrupt. I have a weather monitoring station that works off of two AA batteries for 12-16 months at a time.

by sambeau 11y ago

rtl49 11y ago

It depends a great deal on whether it's possible to unlock the bootloader. Unfortunately, many of these cheap phones are loaded with the carrier's software. They don't want you to uninstall it, so they don't let you unlock the bootloader, which would enable you to modify the system partition on the device. This means you can't do much with it unless someone discovers a vulnerability that grants you root access.

jnbiche 11y ago
He wouldn't need to load a custom ROM just to make and install an app that monitors a few peripheral sensors (all of which should be accessible via the Android SDK).
- rtl49 11y ago
  True, but he specifically mentioned the RbPi and Arduino in his comment. This makes me believe he's interested in more functionality than what is offered by the standard API.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

jnbiche 11y ago

Well, it's running Android, so all you'd need to do is make an Android app to do this. Android SDK is pretty powerful even without root access, so what you're wanting to do shouldn't be a problem from a software perspective (now, whether the hardware is appropriate, I have no idea).

thearn4 11y ago

I think the biggest advantage of a micro-controller (like Arduino or an MSP) or prototyping microcomputer (like the Pi or BeagleBone) are control of GPIOs from a reasonably high-level language. At least for my applications. serial and parallel ports on PCs used to give you some functionality similar to this too. But smartphones lack that for the most part (the best you can expect is typically bluetooth comms with a separate device). If you need remote logging, the 3G Particle Electron boards (particle.io) should be released soon, which I'm pretty excited for.

TkTech 11y ago
More importantly, the power usage typically is/can be a few orders of magnitude less, especially when you can control the power state of the IC and wake it up with an external interrupt. I have a weather monitoring station that works off of two AA batteries for 12-16 months at a time.